Category Archives: twitter

Author Update: I Finally Made the Leap

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picture taken by moi when her hands should have been on the wheel. Sunset, Fargo, ND #nofilter

Happy Monday! I hope your week is getting off to a great start, and may that include a bottomless cup of coffee.

Today’s post is more of “what’s going on with me” than anything else. I finally left Twitter for good after a scuffle over a tweet who was calling out authors like Stephenie Meyer and Sarah J Maas (and I think Rebecca Yarros was in there too). The person who tweeted brought race into it, and I scooted my butt out of that conversation. As a white cishet woman who grew up in a middle income family, I know how privileged I am in regard to anything, not just publishing. I’m fortunate I have money to play with ads, I’m fortunate I have a college education. I’m fortunate in a lot of ways, and I have never argued that. I know publishing has a long way to go in terms of marginalized voices. There’s no debating that whatsoever, but I think there’s a difference between hating books that have done well because you think they aren’t well-written and don’t deserve it, and hating certain (white) women authors because of how the publishing industry is. I believed that tweet came from the former perspective when it was the latter, and had I known, I wouldn’t have gotten involved. I’ve always defended authors like Stephenie, EL James, and Colleen Hoover (the vacuum lady, if your nickname can be that disrespectful. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to scrub this joke about her books from my mind: Nothing sucks like a Hoover). We always say that authors aren’t what they write, but then in the next breath we call Stephenie Meyer a groomer supporter because Jacob imprinted on Renesmee when she was an infant. I get tired of the hypocrites, tired of the bitterness. I won’t debate anyone’s experience, and I sure as hell won’t tell someone how to think or feel, so I bowed out. I blanked out my banner, took my personal profile picture down and said in my bio that the account is no longer active. I don’t like that vibe, only because yes, the industry does have a lot of work to do, but screaming about it won’t make change. Attacking people won’t make change. Spewing resentment all over the internet won’t make change. And I see this from everyone. It wasn’t that long ago a white author was editing Rebecca Yarros’ first page, saying what a crap book her Fourth Wing novel is and how it didn’t deserve to be printed. I stood up to her, but right or wrong on my part, when someone is calling me a mad white lady, I’ll graciously concede.

It was a lesson to keep scrolling if you don’t like what you see, and if you’re online you’re going to be tested many times. I joined Threads with the hope that I can stop myself from commenting if something makes me angry (after a week in, there is a lot that makes me angry). I have a low tolerance for stupidity and there is a lot of it in the self-publishing industry. I saw this on FB last week! This is the stuff that makes me mad, and this is the kind of reply that gets me into trouble.

Original post: For all the author's not being paid by Amazon we need to get together and make a move and demand our money. If you are being told they are probably lying to you like thousands of other author's. To find out how many of your books have sold do Google your name plus the name of your books PLUS "in stock" Those words are important because if they are in stock they were paid for by the book store. My reply:What are you talking about? Amazon doesn't cheat authors. If you don't like how they treat you, don't publish with them. There are a ton of other platforms that will sell your book. And please learn where apostrophes go!
name and FB group blanked out to protect the intelligence-challenged.

I get tired of people saying that Amazon cheats its authors, get tired of being called a sheeple because I like to write to market. Maybe my books don’t deserve to sell either, because I write romance, use tropes, and have fun writing my books (and can write them quickly too, oh snap!). It’s just another form of gatekeeping as far as I’m concerned, but I do understand there isn’t room at the table for everyone, and I’ve been eating my meals on the floor for a long time. At least I have a piece of carpet, and I know a lot of authors don’t. So, I’m trying approach my time on Threads in a more positive way–be helpful if I can, be encouraging. But mainly, I joined to keep my thumb on the pulse of the industry–indie pub as well as romance in particular. Like Tyrion Lannister, I like knowing things, like the RWA embracing AI and hosting classes to teach writers how to use it to write romance books.

Romance Writers of America (I believe this is a Facebook screenshot) Dive into the exciting world of AI-assisted romance writing with Rachelle Ayala, a multi-published romance author working on book number 100. Rachelle has been using AI for a year, and she's happy to cut through the hype and show you insider tips--from sparking new story ideas to refining your manuscript, generating scenes or penning compelling market copy. This session is packed with live demos of how Rachelle uses AI, practical advice on how to get started, and a glimpse into the future of how AI will impact writing and storytelling. Visit https://www.rwa.org/chapterevents to lear more and view all the upcoming RWA chapter events offered. Hashtags.

I like knowing things like the cover for Gothikana was made with AI elements and the publisher is claiming “not to know.” You can read the Publisher’s Weekly article here. I just like knowing that stuff because I feel like it’s part of my job as an indie author to know what people are talking about. There was some of that on Twitter too, but there was too much bitterness to wade through to see what I really wanted to see. I could have just started blocking people, but that kind of atmosphere isn’t good for anyone’s mental health. So far, Threads seems to be more pleasant and professional, and that can be a good thing, but also maybe a not-so-good-thing. I do a lot of things that are looked down on, like editing my own books, doing my own covers. Shilling Bryan Cohen’s free ad class when a lot of people don’t think of him as anything more than a hack. You don’t want to be anything less than who you are online because that will always come back to bite you, but I’m going to be a lot more apprehensive and careful about what I share on Threads. Mostly, I just needed a new place to scroll, and I’ll follow people if I like their content without thought of gaining followers. I don’t need them–I’m not planning to try to sell my books on there in any way. If you have an account and want to connect, here’s my profile: https://www.threads.net/@vaniamargenerheault

Speaking of selling books, my Amazon ads are still on fire, and I’m having to keep a close eye on them. Unfortunately, they are doing really well impression- and click-wise, and it triggered my fear of missing out. I don’t want to turn any of them off just in case I’m pausing highly profitable ads. And you really don’t know that until you turn them off and over the course of a couple weeks your sales die. Having FOMO in this industry is terrible. I buy classes, let ads run, join author groups I probably don’t need to be a part of. I probably COULD turn off half my Amazon ads and I would be just fine, but I already compromised and turned off all the ads in the UK, so I’m just going to have to watch them like a hawk. I’ll use this blog as an accountability partner and compare royalties and ad spend on a biweekly basis. I don’t want to do so much of that in real time as I’ve said before, Amazon’s reporting isn’t that great, and a book that looks like it isn’t getting page reads could prove me wrong when the reporting catches up.

I’m on chapter nine of the 5th book in my series. I don’t know if I’ll be able to finish by the end of the month, but getting both done by the end of March seems doable. I should start playing with the covers more seriously so I don’t have a panic attack when the editing is done but the covers are still unfinished. I’m not even sure the direction I want to go in anymore, except I like the frames, and I found some gold filigree that I put together to make them that looks really nice. I still need the men, maybe the backgrounds. I bought a few font duos from Creative Fabrica the other day (thank you Stanee in the Design Resources Hub on FB for posting the sale), and the only way to know if they’ll work is to try them and see. There’s no point to that though unless I can get a template cover firmed up, but I’ve been playing so I don’t feel too lost or like I’m starting from scratch.

Scrolling through my author FB groups made me realize that my email attached to this website wasn’t accepting incoming email. Apparently, it’s an issue for anyone who was messing around with their DNS records. I already knew how to restore records from when a WordPress tech support person helped me get my website back up after I accidentally deleted my A records, so restoring my email DNS records was easy. I was cautioned and was told that my authentication wouldn’t work anymore if I did that, but I reran all the tests, and it looks like everything is still fine. I feel bad that people couldn’t email me for a whole month because I didn’t know, but I’m lucky that not many people reach out to me anyway. Now that I figured that out, I hope all the damage control that I needed to do to get my newsletter and website aligned is over. But, as I’ve said, that is one of the reasons I’m in so many groups. You need that kind of information because you don’t always know what you don’t know.

I’ve been trying to do the things I said I was going to do if I felt better and I do, and I’ve been going on more walks in the evenings. Since I’ve been on my “ovary pills” as I call them, a lot of my negative feelings about going for walks are gone, and I’ve enjoyed my time outside. I guess I was feeling hormonally depressed and those pills have elevated my mood, which is funny because the order that went with my prescription is to “take as tolerated” and I am tolerating them just fine. That’s a good thing–I haven’t felt this much like myself in a long time. I also said I wanted to watch Queen Charlotte, and I have two episodes of that left. I have to force myself to watch TV because it’s not normally something I like to do anyway, but I’m enjoying the show and I’ll be glad to be caught up. I still want to rewatch the first season of Carnival Row on Prime and watch the second/last season. I really enjoyed that too, and I was happy they finished it off as COVID delayed the filming. It will be nice to see how it ends.

I think that is all for now. I hope you all have a great week, and thanks for all your support. I’ve had a lot of people say they are happy I’m feeling better, and I appreciate it a lot. It’s been a long three years, and it’s nice to be excited again.

Until next time!

Compassion Fatigue. What is it, and how does it affect your marketing?

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Tired and sad woman sitting at desk with forehead resting on her hands.

Lots going on over on Twitter last week. Elon Musk reluctantly took over causing a tsunami of emotions. A lot of people talked about leaving (and still are), only to follow up that thought with, where else is there to go? Twitter is a unique experience, offering bite-sized content and opportunities to respond to other people in 280 characters or less. If you’ve read any of my prior blog posts, you’ll know I spend a lot of time over there, but I don’t use it as a promotional tool. Plenty of people do, and what started popping up in my feed after Musk took over surprised me. More than one person said, “If I have to leave Twitter, there goes my writing career.” As an example:

This is actually a common refrain, people depending on Twitter and nothing else because it’s free, and as long as you tweet regularly so the algorithms remember who you are, you can nurture a decent reach. But no matter how far you reach, after a while you will run out of people who will want to buy your books. Maybe that saturation point will take a while, especially if you’re new and you put a lot of effort into building your account, but anyone with a huge account can tell you that Twitter doesn’t sell books in the number they wish it did.

Where does compassion fatigue come in? Let’s first take a look at what it is. I hadn’t heard of it until I was chatting with my friend Sami-Jo about this very topic which led to this blog post. According to WebMD compassion fatigue is:

Compassion fatigue is a term that describes the physical, emotional, and psychological impact of helping others — often through experiences of stress or trauma. Compassion fatigue is often mistaken for burnout, which is a cumulative sense of fatigue or dissatisfaction.

https://www.webmd.com/mental-health/signs-compassion-fatigue

When you think of Twitter and marketing, you think of posting promotional material like this:

made with Canva

Or maybe something not so fancy like this:

Add a link, and there you go. Something quick and cute that can reach hundreds, if not thousands, of people in a few minutes. I can see why Twitter would be people’s first choice. Free and easy, it gives off the illusion you’re marketing. I say only the illusion of marketing because to truly market and advertise your books, you need to show those ads to readers who read your genre and want to buy. Writer Twitter is full of writers, and while, yes, we are readers, we don’t read nearly as much as a reader who doesn’t write. Also, there is a mish-mash of genres on Twitter, and even if your promo reaches 1,000 of your followers, only 10 of those could read the genre you’re writing in.

So, let’s take this a little farther. You’re promoting your books, chatting with other authors, sell a handful, but not as many as you think you should because you spend A LOT OF TIME on Twitter (and buying indie books, but let’s not go there because a buy for a buy is icky and we don’t do that, right?). Time that could be better spent writing, if you’re honest with yourself. And this is where compassion fatigue comes into play. You start complaining about sales. Tweeting screenshots of your empty sales dashboard, moaning that a new release didn’t take off. Then some of your friends buy one of your books to cheer you up, and for that customer, you’ve reached your saturation limit. Then you do it again and again for every new release, and you get more bitter and more bitter because your friends aren’t going to buy every book you write. They can’t. They can’t afford $4.99 a book every time you release. They have their own careers and family obligations to see to, and let’s face it, $4.99 is a gallon of milk, right? They have kids they need to feed, and times right now are tough. You get angry your books aren’t selling because you need money too, they get sad and not a little upset because they’ve helped you and can’t anymore.

Complaining about sales when you use Twitter to find readers will only tell the people who have bought your books that their purchases weren’t enough.

When you complain on Twitter and you garner some sales from tweeting your empty sales dashboard, those sales turn into pity buys, and that is not a good sustainable marketing strategy.

So when someone says, I don’t have a writing career without Twitter, I’m baffled because yes, while it’s free, there are several other ways to promote your books. Relying on only one way is a fool’s game and one you won’t win. I’ve blogged a lot over the past couple of years on ways you can market your book that’s not Twitter, and those are: buy a promo from places like Free/Bargainbooksy, E-reader News Today, Robin’s Reads, Fussy Librarian, and more. Buying a slot in one of those reader newsletters will grab you more readers than hours of tweeting into the void. Write a reader magnet, set up a newsletter, and build your reader list through platforms like Bookfunnel and StoryOrigin. Learn how to use Amazon ads and run a couple of low cost-per-click ads. I would rather run ads and sell a couple of books a day than spend hours on Twitter begging people to buy my book. Publish consistently, and that means the number of books a year as well as not genre-hopping for a bit to build an audience for that genre.

I get that authors are afraid to sink money into their books, but ads and promos are only expensive if your book isn’t advertising ready and it doesn’t sell (after all, you’re supposed to make more than you spend. That’s the point of an ad.). I’ve seen people say, I bought a promo and didn’t earn my fee back. That’s a you problem, not a promo problem (and definitely not a Twitter problem). Likely, your cover wasn’t good enough, or the ad copy they ask you to write to go along with a picture of your cover wasn’t hooky enough. Maybe you were trying to promote a standalone when a lot of earning a fee back consists of read-through or the purchases of other books in the series.

The good news is, if you’re losing money on promos, you can adjust. Write something new. Replace your cover with something from GetCovers (their prices are very inexpensive compared to some that are out there). Workshop your blurb and change it on your Amazon product page. But out of anything you can do, stop complaining on Twitter. Your friends and followers aren’t responsible for your writing career. They can’t carry you. They want to write and sell their own books. After a while, they’ll get sick of seeing your promos and hearing you beg. They’ll mute you out of bitterness and a feeling of worthlessness that their support wasn’t good enough for you.

If Elon Musk shuts down Twitter either by fault or design, how fucked would you be? Would you consider your writing career destroyed, or would you simply adjust your sails and chart a different course? I’d miss some friends I’ve met on Twitter and don’t know how to contact any other way, and maybe I wouldn’t see as much traffic on my blog as I do now, but Twitter closing up shop would have zero affect on my book sales. That’s a good thing. If you depend on Twitter and you’re telling yourself you have nowhere else to go, you’ve trapped yourself there out of fear. Don’t do that. You are in control of your writing career, not Elon Musk. Figure things out for yourself because not everything is forever.

As for the tweet above? She did end up with a few pity buys, and maybe that’s the way publishing works for her, but it’s not the way it works for me, and I hope it’s not the way it works for you.

At some point I’ll probably get beat up for this blog post, and I’m not trying to make anyone feel bad or embarrass anyone. Writing and publishing for me is pretty much my whole world, and if I depended on one unsteady platform for my longevity, I would quit writing and funnel my passion into something else. It truly is a lonely road, and isolating yourself only makes it worse. There’s talk now that everyone will need to be verified on Twitter if they want their tweets seen, and the cost will be $11.00 a month. Why sink further into the pit if you plan on paying that? If Twitter isn’t working for you now, it won’t work for you then.

With the holidays coming up and a shaky economy, I wish all of you good luck writing and publishing and hope 2023 is your best year ever.

Thursday Thoughts and an Author Update.

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Today was an unexpectedly busy day: I had to bring my cat, Harley to the vet. I noticed she would go into the litter box but not do anything, and I suspected she was constipated, which turned out to be the case. $400.00 and an enema later, she’s shaky but going to the bathroom. She’s snoozing on the floor next to me right now where I can keep an eye on her. The vet sent us home with some stool softener and some fiber-rich food. I hope this does the trick as it was a costly trip for me, but who can put a price on love?

calico female cat hidden by white blanket with face poking out

Anyway, I’m not feeling much better than she is, having taken another dose of ibuprofen today which is not like me at all. My hysterectomy is all set for the 28th of March, and I dropped off my FMLA paperwork at the clinic this afternoon.

flat desk with laptop and sharpened orange pencils. Guest blogger text

I didn’t want to leave the blog unattended, and I set up some pretty cool guest bloggers for the month of April while I force myself to relax and recuperate (haha). Barbara Avon will be writing about being a multi-genre author, and I asked Vera Brook to write something about writing short stories and submitting them for publication. I’m also going to interview Sami Jo Cairns about her experiences with small presses and her thoughts on going indie with her series for the first time. Since I always do a giveaway with my author interviews, I probably won’t post that until the end of the month when I can get to the post office if need be to mail out a prize. So I’m really l excited for some fresh blood on the blog as well as some exciting topics I’ve never written about because those aren’t my experiences. I may look for one more person to help me with the remaining Monday of the month, but we’ll see. I don’t think I’ll be incapacitated to the extent I can’t write or blog, but I was hoping to also launch a book in April, but I honestly don’t see that happening right now.

I am going through my six book series again. During the last sweep, I thought I was fixing everything that needed to be fixed, but then I was listening to book 6 and I started catching all my crutch words I didn’t notice with the other five books (why am I like this?). While I caught some discrepancies last time, this final read-through is rewording sentences to get rid of them. The books as a whole will sound stronger, but this edit requires ingenuity on my part. My crutch words in these books: take/taken/taking/took and making. I’ve never had a problem with those words before, but since these are the first books I wrote after I switch to first person present, it was how I was writing while I figured out my voice I’m just now recognizing. I am VERY happy with the way the first book is sounding since realizing I needed to weed out those words, and I shouldn’t need to read them again after I’m done.

But this does put me in a quandary as I don’t work on more than one WIP at a time (I consider my series one project) so if my beta reader finishes my duet in the near future, I may not be in a position to work on any fixes he brings to my attention. Which sucks, but because I’m working with a huge story arc, I’m reluctant to edit another project and break my momentum. I can listen to these pretty fast though, and I think I’ll only be a month before and I can publish in May instead of April. I’m nothing if not patient, so this isn’t as bad as I thought it was when I started rereading my series again from book one.

I did get some nasty news though, and MailerLite is revamping their interface which is a terrible terrible terrible idea, because I had just finally gotten used to dealing with the old one. I haven’t even logged on to see the changes. I might have my reader magnet set up on BookFunnel, but when my my tax refund dropped into my account, instead of saving it, I made a rash and too-positive-thinking-for-my-own-good decision to upgrade my BookFunnel account so I can just share the BookFunnel link to my reader magnet and BookFunnel will collect email addresses for me. It decreases the number of clicks a person has to do to sign up for my newsletter, and since I paid extra for MailerLite integration, my life should be a little easier. But I still have to figure out all that stuff, how it works, yada, yada, yada, so I’m not going to be flat on my back watching Netflix and eating ice cream while my body is trying to figure out where my uterus went. I have a crap-ton of stuff to do, and if I take three or four weeks off work, I can put 40 hours a week into my second job. Of course, that’s not me scamming my FMLA. I have plenty of paid time off they’re going to be more than happy to use first, which is fine. I can’t afford to take time off without getting paid for it somehow.

In other crappy news, too, with BookSprout also revamping, I’ve heard in an FB group or two that they are doing away with their free plans. If you don’t know what BookSprout is, it’s a website where readers request arcs of books that need reviews. You can put your book up and ask for reviews and where you want the readers to post them. I tried it, didn’t get too much of a response for my books, but it’s one of those things that only work if you’re writing to-market commercial fiction. My 3rd person stuff was okay, but still, like finding readers in general, I didn’t stick to a subgenre and it made it difficult to hook readers and reviewers alike. Still, I was going to try again with my launch this spring. So far, the free plan is still available, but I’ve heard nothing about being grandfathered in while they roll out the new update.

When I added up what I spend on my business for my accountant, it made me a little sick inside. I know you have to spend money to make money, and as indie-publishing evolves and it’s more difficult to compete with other authors, you may find you have no choice but to invest in some of these tools. I got into it with someone on Twitter today who said Twitter sells books, and when I asked how many (because I don’t believe it does) he didn’t have anything to say. When you depend on only one thing for marketing, and I don’t even care if you choose Twitter, or FB ads, or Bookbub ads, or you like TikTok, you have to realize that your reach will be limited. In his book, Nicholas Erik outlines many ways to market your book. It’s a very informative, and you should grab a copy.

https://www.amazon.com/Ultimate-Guide-Book-Marketing-Selling-ebook/dp/B083XLGXC3/

And if you can’t resist some drama, here’s the thread on Twitter I’m referring to.

Have a great weekend, everyone! See you Monday!

Thursday Thoughts and Author Update

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I haven’t give you an author update for a while, but mainly I’ve been listening to my series and slowly getting that ready for my 2023 release. I just started book 3, and I’ve been tweaking, checking consistency with the other books, making sure there aren’t any discrepancies with what the characters say and the information they find out from book to book. You might wonder how I can do this, and let’s just say, I have 75% of my 480,000 words memorized. Haha. I’m kind of kidding, but kind of not and it definitely helps that I’ve already read through this series about five times and let months go by between reads (I wrote these in 2020). Also, listening to these books is a different way of consuming them, and I’m finding things I wouldn’t catch by reading only.

I am very satisfied with how these are coming along, and despite a mini-breakdown I had a few weeks ago about finding beta readers and proofers, I feel good about them all as a whole. I’ve come to the painful realization that I won’t have any betas or proofers, mostly because now isn’t the time to test proofers and betas. I should have set up a system and formed my “team” long before this, and it’s just too big of a project to be trying people out now to see if they are a good fit. While it’s always is a good idea to have more than one set of eyes on your books–especially for newbie authors–sometimes that just isn’t possible for one reason or another and while no one likes to admit it, there are indies out there who publish with the barest of editing and do just fine. In a perfect world, I would love to have some feedback on the overall story and to make sure all the details are consistent, but with my English degree and my firm grasp of grammar and punctuation, I’m not worried about the technical side of things, at least. I’ve been sifting through stock photos too and marking the ones I like but I won’t be able to do the covers until closer to the end of the year when I can get a better look at what will be trending. Who knows what will be hot for Billionaire covers a year from now? There’s no use getting set on a couple or anything else if I’m going to have to redo them later. Cover-to-market is really important, especially in romance, and getting impatient will just create more work for myself.

I’ve already had to redo my covers for my duet, as black and white covers with a pop of color for the title are slowly starting to slip away. I revamped the covers for my Cedar Hill duet, making them color instead of black and white. Excuse the rough shape they’re in. They aren’t set in stone, and I haven’t purchased the stock photos yet. Tell me which ones you like the best:

male model captivate by her book cover black and white electric blue font for title
male model captivated by her cover color gold color font for title

male model addicted to her book cover black and white pink font for title
male model addicted to her book cover in color gray color font for title

Anyway, so I won’t be doing the covers for the series, but I can do everything else, and I’m hoping I’m finished with them by the summer as I still think I want to write a Christmas novel for release at the beginning of November. Listening to these isn’t taking as long as I anticipated it would, so I should have plenty of time to write it while doing everything else to get my duet ready for release thing spring and my series ready for next year.

This is a topic that would probably better fit a Monday post, but I just want to complain a little bit about it here. The other day, an agent on Twitter tweeted this advice:

Twitter tweet snapshot: It breaks my heart when I get a great pitch for a book somewhere between 50 and 70k. It's almost always a no. There are exceptions, of course, but in general, adult fiction is between 80k and 120k. 60k is just too short to fit comfortably on the shelf. 12:03AM 2/6/22 Twitter Web App 81 Retweets 264 Quote Tweets 714 likes

Writer Twitter blew up. This agent was attacked on so many levels, and so many people who had to weigh in on this agent’s advice and opinion. She eventually locked her account down and I wasn’t privy to most of the horrid aftermath. I’m appalled at the way the writing community treated her, and I feel terrible she was subjected to such aggressive behavior for simply offering a guideline to help querying writers.

No one wants to hear there are rules, and there’s not a day goes by on Twitter when I don’t see “I’m an indie so I don’t have to follow the rules,” or “Rules are made to be broken.” There are rules, and break them at your own detriment. If you want to query, follow the agent’s guidelines. That includes the genre they rep and the length of the book they prefer. If you want to indie publish, go for it, but there are industry standards. You need to format your book correctly, and include all the correct parts. You can’t use any photo you want for the cover. You can’t use song lyrics in your book unless you write to that artist’s record label and ask permission and probably pay a fee. (If you want more legal advice, Helen Sedwick’s book, Self-Publisher’s Legal Handbook, Second Edition: Updated Guide to Protecting Your Rights and Wallet is invaluable.) There are a gazillion “rules” we must follow every time we publish a book. To say there are no rules is destructive. Not following the rules can prevent you from finding readers at best and can land you legal hot water at the worst. I don’t understand why writers and authors continue to beat a dead horse, but there are rules.

Here is a tweet threads to scroll through if you want. I thought I saved more, but I can’t find the other one where I stole the screenshot of the tweet to begin with. The agent’s tweet and thread is gone–it disappeared for me when she locked her account down, but there’s plenty of fodder if you want to scroll through on your lunch break.

If you want to read another agent’s thread about word count and guidelines, here’s Laura Zatz’s thread:

When it comes to word count, I have found that reaching a higher count can be difficult for newbie writers because 1) they don’t understand how to twist a subplot into the main plot, 2) don’t develop their characters well enough to explore full character arcs 3) don’t know how to write engaging conflict and/or 4) they tell, not show, which always takes fewer words–showing takes a lot more room on the page. Also, some, but not all, indies have gotten into the habit of writing shorter because it helps them publish faster keeping them on top of Amazon’s algorithms.

If you’re a romance author, and like writing novellas, look at Carina Press–the digital arm of Harlequin. They take agent-free submissions, and they publish novellas that are 35k words and up.

Anyway, I’m going back to listening to my book–which is 91k, by the way. Every book in this series is between 85-93k, but they are as long as they need to be for that section of the story.

Be kind to each other, y’all. How you present yourself online will stick with you, and may come back to bite you in ways you never would have dreamed possible.

Until next time!

When Authors Act Out Online

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Last week there was a bit of drama when an author lashed out on Twitter at readers for leaving less than a five star review. Of course everyone was offended, and in true form, went to her Goodreads book profile and slammed it with one star reviews in retaliation.

When stuff like this happens, it’s always a train wreck, and we can’t look away as the author goes down in flames.

This isn’t the first time an author has behaved badly on social media–I recall the author who had their book deal terminated because she tweeted a derogatory remark about a Black woman eating on a train.

We’ve probably all had our fair share of cutting it close on social media–pressing an opinion on someone who doesn’t want to hear it, posting about religion, politics, or a hot take about COVID. Lots of authors say they should be able to post whatever they like, and to a point, I believe that, too. My personal Facebook profile is public and I post memes that have the F word in them–a lot. I have a dry sense of humor, but I try not to share anything that would be offensive (I don’t spread racism or body-shaming and wouldn’t even if I wasn’t an author). I support a lot of wildlife rescues, and if you follow my feed long enough, you’ll see that I love bats and foxes. On Twitter I get into spats–someone called me a twat the other day because I defended Stephenie Meyer and her Twilight series–and if you ask for an opinion, I’ll give you mine. If I hate your cover, yessir, I will let you know. It’s not my problem if you agree with it or not, but I’ll tell you straight.

One thing we don’t consider is the state of an author’s mental health when they lash out. When I read all the drama that author put on herself–slamming those reviewers for less than five star reviews–I didn’t automatically call her a bitch or entitled. I thought, what is that author going through she has to lash out because of a good review? What is that author’s life like? Does she see a therapist? Is she on medication? Did she just go through a breakup? Did the stress of launching of her book make her snap? If you comb through some tweets, someone reveals the author was high and tweeting in the middle of the night. I have no idea if this is true, but it wouldn’t be the first time an author, or anyone for that matter, has been drunk or high and posted something they later regretted. Drunk-texting an ex and begging him to come back isn’t the same as tweeting something so terrible it could ruin your career, but you get my meaning.

Authors are already a lonely bunch, and I haven’t met many writers who are actually in a good place mental-health wise. They’re only good at hiding that they aren’t. Even the woman who called me a twat defaulted to rage someone had the audacity to disagree with her. That’s a lot of anger built up to attack someone you don’t know for having a differing opinion. I would imagine this author has been querying for a while and hasn’t managed to grab a book deal and she’s furious someone like Stephenie could not only secure a book deal, but became an international bestseller and was offered a movie deal, too. Maybe anger isn’t a mental health issue, but anger management is in the behavioral health department, and this author should find some help.

Anyway, I got a little off track there. The whole point of this blog post is that things aren’t always what they seem, and I hope I wasn’t the only one to have given this author the benefit of the doubt. Maybe that’s misplaced and she does feel entitled to 5 star reviews, but I tend to think this last year has been hard on everyone, and not enough people are giving others grace. The world is a huge place, but when we are stuck in our little bubbles, it’s hard to walk a mile in someone’s shoes–especially if we’ve been under lockdown for the past 12 months.

I don’t know what this will do to her career. I Googled a bit, but at the time of this writing, there isn’t a blog post or article I can reference that even speculates. I don’t know what her publisher will do, or if she has a PR manager who can do damage control or if they’re interested in doing that. I do know she’s lucky in that something will take her place–I’ve already heard grumblings about the Vivian finalists that the RWA put out a couple days ago. I didn’t renew my membership so I don’t know what book title is evoking the anger (something about a serial killer romcom?), but #romancelandia will be interesting to watch coming up.

What can you do to keep your social media on track?

  • Pause before you tweet or post. I’m always taken with this poster in my clinic’s office when I check in. If what you’re going to to post isn’t any of those things, maybe you don’t need to put it out into the world.
Think before you speak: Is it True? Is it Helpful? Is it Inspiring? Is it Necessary? Is it Kind?
  • Double check what you’re posting on social media is the message you want to convey to the people who follow you. A lot of authors don’t know what their brand is, and I’m not really any different. To the indie authors in the community, I want to be seen as helpful, kind, supportive. I don’t want to be known as someone who is willing to make a buck off iffy information, and trust me there is a lot of that out there. I’ll tell the truth. If you’re cover isn’t working for the genre, it’s not working. If it looks homemade, I’ll tell you. That may not be seen as kind if it’s not the feedback you’re looking for, but there is a huge gap between Writer Twitter and the professionals in the Facebook groups I’m a part of who are making a living wage with their books. I’m not looking to bridge that gap, but if I can help one person make one more sale than they would have, then speaking up is worth it.
  • What are your social media goals? I’m on social media to have fun, network, learn new things about the industry, and drive readers to my blog. I don’t have a reader group on FB (yet), I post what I want on IG without regard to trying to find readers. There is a strong romance community (that I have found, anyway) but it mostly consists of writers sharing the romance novels that they love to read when they aren’t writing. It takes a while to realize that social media (free book marketing) doesn’t work as well as it used to.

If you’re angry, you may not take that pause before lashing out, or maybe you need to vent and have no where to put it but a long FB post. Censoring yourself may be one the hardest things you can do if you feel passionately about something, but the last thing you want to do is lose out on a networking opportunity or a collaboration, or even a book deal if that’s what you want because of something you said in a moment of weakness online.

Mental health is a serious issue, but if you follow along with that author who lashed out and see what other writers and book bloggers did to her book on her Goodreads profile not everyone is willing to give the benefit of the doubt or a second chance. I realize you can’t live your life in fear, but you can think about what you’re projecting out into the world. That might actually help your mental health in the long run.

Do you want to read more about the mental health of writers? Look here.

The Writing Life: Writers and Mental Health

Shattering the Misery Myth: How to Nurture Your Mental Health as a Writer

Sales vs. Borrows: What they mean for your business and other rambling thoughts.

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Happy Monday from cold, chilly, and snowy Minnesota!! It’s not so happy for me since I had a hell of a week last week, and not in a good way. Unfortunately, I had a huge personal setback, and in the coming months I’ll be working a lot more hours at my day job. I don’t know what that’s going to mean for my writing. I type for the deaf and hearing impaired, and going from part-time to full-time may slow down my writing some. Not because I won’t have as much time, though that will be a factor, but I just can’t type that much without my arms and hands paying the price. Luckily, I’m in the editing phase of my books, but when it comes to future projects, they won’t be done as quickly.

girl looking over cliff text: trying to figure out your path feels like a dead end at times.

That’s okay because I’m still trying to find my way in this business, and I’m wondering if I’m really going to make it or if I have the energy to even keep trying. Everyone knows that a book a year is too slow for indie publishing (unless you’re the exception that proves the rule like Jami Albright), and I’ve seen time and again those authors who are able to only release one book a year struggle to find success. On the other hand, for the past three years I’ve been burning the candle at both ends, and all that has gotten me is a big case of burnout. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve enjoyed writing this series, and I can’t wait to publish them. But I’ve never made it a secret that I hate all the stupid crap authors have to do to find readers–newsletters, giveaways, author promotions, things like that, that take time to learn and author promotions are only as good as the authors and their books. It doesn’t help your career at all to join with an author who isn’t writing quality books. And because I haven’t declared a niche, it’s difficult to partner with authors who write what I do. I’m a loner in life, and I guess I’m a loner in this business, too.

Maybe, in a small way, it will be a relief to give myself permission to slow down. I could start reading again without guilt. I could watch Netflix without feeling like I should be writing. I’ve always scoffed at people who have hobbies other than spending all their time writing, like baking. I always thought if you weren’t putting in 20 hours a week writing that you weren’t taking it seriously, and I admit, I had a lot of scorn for people who let their personal problems get in the way of their writing schedules. I mean, I wrote books through a divorce, through carpal tunnel surgery, through my precious cat’s bladder surgery, through my son’s surgery on his back in February of this year. (And he’s still healing.) None of that stopped me. I love to write, didn’t let anything get in the way of the career I was trying to build. I won’t say it’s for nothing, because I have a decent backlist and it didn’t take me long to write and publish them. But if you factor in ad spend, I only earn pennies a day, and I’m at the point where I’m wondering if it’s really worth it. Publishing is like the lottery, you can’t win if you don’t play, but cutting down my word count to a few thousand a week sounds pretty good right about now. Yeah, I’m writing this crying my eyes out. You don’t have to tell me I need to find balance, but in a world where there are 8,000 titles published every month, it’s a bit difficult to find anything meaningful in what I’ve chosen to do with my free time. Maybe the next book I write will go on wattpad. More people will likely read it if it’s free.

Anyway, I should start a weekly “Crazy Crap I read in a FB Writing Group” segment to the blog. To make matters worse, I just joined another group, this one is called Publishing with IngramSpark, and I already hate all the stupid questions they ask that they could find the answers to if they took a minute to Google instead of asking someone to waste their time. That’s not what I wanted to bitch about however.

[Insert grin here.]

Last week there was a woman who posted that she took her book out of KU ten days after enrolling in KDP Select. Everyone told her that wasn’t enough time to make a decision like that, and I told her that a wide audience and a KU audience were different and you need time to cultivate both of them. Hopping back and forth isn’t the answer. She said her reason for going back to wide is she preferred having sales over KU borrows. Now, she wasn’t getting any borrows–if you’re not doing ads KU subscribers aren’t going to know your book even exists. So her sales dried up and weren’t replaced with KU reads. That’s common switching from wide to KU.

But it made me wonder: would you prefer a sale or a borrow? A sale gives you the royalty and the sales rank boost, a borrow will only boost your sales rank–you don’t get paid unless the customer starts reading, and even then you may only get partial royalties if they don’t finish. That’s information Amazon doesn’t share with us. It would be nice to know if out of 330 pages read, if that was one person who enjoyed the book, or several people who borrowed and couldn’t get past the first chapter then returned it unfinished.

An author who may not be confident in their book may not like being in KU. Is it safe to say only the “really good” books thrive in KU? The ones that are well-written and have a fantastic story that make the reader read until the very end? You can only reap the benefits of KU if your book is good enough for a reader to make it to the end. And forget it if you’ve written a series without a strong first book. No one will read the others, and the books will sit in KU without reads or sales. I looked up her books, and she had one book, and one on preorder. She’s searching for the brass ring, but she’s not going to find it with so few books and jumping around from platform to platform. I wish her all the best.

Being that this will be my last blog post of the month, and that November is one of the craziest months of the year for me (my daughter has a birthday, Thanksgiving, and my birthday not to mention any Christmas shopping I want to do happens in November because I refuse to go into a store in December) my blog posts for the rest of the year may be a little spotty. I’ll share my stats now, and then maybe do a year-end recap toward the end of December. And no, I’m not doing NaNo this year. I never do it. I’m never in a good place in my publishing schedule to do it, and I won’t set anything aside to work on something new. This is probably the only time my tunnel vision has helped me. I don’t like working on multiple projects–I won’t get anything done that way.

Anyway, so my ad spend, while not as fabulous as it was in August (still waiting for those royalties to dump into my account) I spent $48.36 as of this writing, the 25th of October. I’ll probably spend $50.00 maybe a little more, by the end of the month. This is over ten ads. I had to stop the ads for Wherever He Goes. I lost eight dollars before I paused them. I don’t know what’s wrong with that book, but I’m never going to make it move. Maybe it’s still the cover, maybe I can’t make the blurb work, but I’m tired of trying. I love the story, but it’s not going anywhere.

For sales, I’ve made $116.99. I’ll probably make it up to $120, maybe $125 by the end of the month.

After ad spend I’ll make about $75.00 in royalties. It’s not terrible, and my next books won’t be in third person past, so it is what it is. That goes back to the burnout thing and wondering where my writing career is going. Success is a great motivator, and if you don’t have any, it’s tough to keep going.

If you’re wondering how I’m doing without Twitter, I’m doing pretty great, actually. I don’t miss it as much as I thought I would. I’ve only popped on once to follow back and someone messaged me to ask for support during a virtual author interview over on FB. If I tweet anything new, I can do it from the platform I’m on, like the WordPress reader or the Bookbub blog, and that helps too. Maybe I’ll go back, maybe I won’t. For right now I don’t see the value in it. Hopefully, that will change.

Have a wonderful finish to October, and don’t forget to vote! Do it for my birthday (November 28th)–that would be the best birthday present a girl could ask for.

Until next time!

Tuesday Thoughts, Large Print, and Getting Rid of Twitter

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Hi, everyone! I know I usually post on Mondays, but to tell you the truth, I’ve been struggling with finding things to blog about lately. I go through that sometimes. I feel like anything I have to say has already been said a million times by someone else, and especially when it comes to writing and publishing, I don’t have much new to share.

I did decide to take a Twitter break, and if you follow me, you can either friend me on FB, or like my FB author page and we can touch base that way. I just couldn’t take the negativity anymore, and it was bringing out my own negativity toward other people. Twitter as a whole is very emotional, and I just can’t handle how sensitive (and insensitive) people can be and when they lash out because of it. I’m not a fragile flower, but geez, there are only so many times I can be “put in my place” without feeling it. To be perfectly honest, I don’t feel like a whole lot of people are writing over there anyway, and it’s not such a great place to find supportive writers who want you to succeed. Last week, I made a graphic and congratulated an author on her release, and she never bothered to retweet it. I think that was the start of me being so discouraged I just wanted to leave. If you can’t support me supporting you, then why are you on there?

twitter logo bird with a red circle through it. no more twitter

I didn’t delete my profile or deactivate my account, but I did pin a “see you next year” tweet to my profile and I deleted the app off my phone. I logged out on my laptop to remind myself when I go on there just to go on there that I’m trying to break the habit. I’m sure it’s one of those things where I’ll go through withdrawal for a few days and after it’s over I’ll feel better.

I blogged about doing large print for The Years Between Us, and I got the proof in the mail the other day. It looks great! I approved the proof and I didn’t have any problems with KDP flagging it as duplicate content. I may do some other books as time allows, though Amazon has stopped putting Large Print as a buying option on the book’s product page. So even though I know there are visually impaired people who would appreciate a Large Print book, I have to weigh time versus return on investment. In the scheme of things, doing the Large Print didn’t take very long, so I could do most of my backlist in the next year or so if I did one per month. We’ll see how it goes. I buy all my own ISBNs, and I have to keep in mind that expense as well. With the way Ingram has been glitching lately and not accepting Vellum files, this book is only available on Amazon, and I didn’t check the box for expanded distribution. I’m impressed that I could price it at 14.99 and still make a couple dollars. In expanded distribuion, I would have made fifty-six cents.

I’m still editing my series, and I suppose that’s going to be something you’ll hear from me for the next little while. I get discouraged when I think about needing to figure out newsletter stuff. I’ve looked around StoryOrigin, and I don’t think I’m going to be using it for right now. I feel like authors forget that cultivating a newsletter list is more than just getting people to sign up for it. You’re supposed to be collecting emails from readers who are going to be fans of your work and support you. I may get the newsletter stuff figured out so I can encourage them to sign up in the backs of my books and aim for as many organic signups as possible. I don’t want to lure readers with a free book to sign up. I know that’s the thing to do, but freebie seekers will cost money eventually because you’ll pay for them to be on your list but they won’t buy when you send out email blasts about a new release.

You guys, I know the rules, but I’m tired of playing this game. I just wanna write and make money doing it. Yep.

Well, I don’t have much else. I did Bryan Cohen’s ad profit challenge, but he didn’t offer anything new from what he showed us in his last challenge. I don’t think I’ll be doing any more of those, though I have met some nice people doing them.

I’m always on the look out for new non-fiction to read, but I haven’t been reading much since I’ve started working from home. It’s a lot easier to get words down now that I am, and I’m reading less. Which is probably why I’m all dried up when it comes to blogging. That said, I’m still listening to podcasts, and the Six Figure Authors podcast has Sara Rosett on this week. She wrote a non-fiction book about writing a series. Since that is one thing I’ve managed to make myself bend for (I prefer standalones) I figure anything that could make the process more tolerable (and profitable!) I need to look into. I ordered How to Write a Series, and I will tell you how I like it. I didn’t realize there is also a workbook that goes with it until I accidentally clicked on it trying to grab the link for you all. Check them out!

You can find these on Amazon here.

If you want to listen to her interview on the podcast, you can find it here:

Thanks for reading!

The authorpreneur I am versus where I was five years ago.

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It’s never fair to compare yourself to where you were five years ago, or more precisely, four and a half years ago, unless you haven’t changed and you can’t see in your rearview mirror through all the regret of wasted time.

16114241When I joined Writer Twitter, I was writing a huge epic fantasy and I thought I needed to be on social media to sell those books. Independent publishing was always a no-brainer, even when I didn’t know exactly what it was, and how I’d heard of it, I have no idea. Probably the one thing that pushed me along was a friend from work who was majoring in publishing at our local university. She gave me one of her textbooks, APE: Author, Publisher, Entrepreneur–How to Publish a Book, by Shawn Welch and Guy Kawasaki. It was my first taste of independent publishing, and being independently published fed into my control-freak nature. (I try to keep that under wraps, so don’t be surprised if it’s the first you’ve heard of it.) I don’t recommend the book now–this industry moves too fast for a book that’s eight years old to hold much relevance.

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These are delightfully naughty stories, and I highly recommend them!

Back then, I was a wide-eyed, starry-eyed girl. People were publishing, they knew a helluva a lot more than I did, and they made the industry sound exciting. I wanted in. I read indie. Lots of indie. Bought lots of indie paperbacks, some from people who don’t write anymore or who have dropped off the grid because other things got in the way. I held books in my hands from people I knew, actually talked to online, and I wanted to hold my books too. One of the very first books I read was by Jewel E. Leonard, Rays of Sunshine. She did everything herself. Her husband helped her with the cover, but she wrote it and edited it, formatted the insides. She was my inspiration, and I started 1700 to publish like she did. (And can you read a blog post I wrote about writing to write and writing to publish here.)

Except, I had no idea how much work it would be to be let in. Because if it’s something that I’ve repeated on this blog for as long as I’ve been blogging, is that behind the cover designers and editors, the huge Twitter accounts, behind the shop talk, and Twitter chats, and blog tours and cover reveals, is this very one important thing. None of that matters if you haven’t written a good book. 

And this isn’t going to be another one of those blog posts. Everyone is going to publish crap. No one is immune from it, and very few are exempt. I’m no exception.

But the thing that probably saved me was the fact that I didn’t know it was crap. I went on my merry way, writing and writing and writing, and publishing and publishing and publishing and blogging about it, too! It was cool. I was a loser who didn’t know I was a loser.

Eventually, I got better. It’s just something that happens if you write enough words. You get better. Since I’ve started publishing, not including the fantasy still on a memory stick that I go back and forth between deciding to edit or not, I’ve written 1,227,000 words. Some of those aren’t published yet, as they belong to a first person trilogy that I haven’t edited. I’m going to write the sister trilogy to that before I release them. But they are written, and I’ll include them in my word count.

That figure isn’t to brag. I know I have a lot of time, and I do use the time I’m given.

But I think back to almost five years ago and how much the industry has changed. I did my book covers in Word. I used a free photo for The Corner of 1700 Hamilton, which I learned is a huge no-no. I formatted my documents myself using the templates KDP still has available though Vellum is so easy to get your hands on these days.

Besides the few people I had help me in the beginning, once I got the hang of writing again, I started editing my own books and for others.

There is something to be said for going back to basics. I learned a lot. I learned what a cover consists of, what bleed means. I can spot extra spaces between words in sentences in a manuscript and how not to put two spaces after a period. I know how terribly a Tab can screw up formatting, and even still today, I’m still learning how important it is to back up files (thanks disappearing Vellum files).

I’ve always moved forward, never gone back too often. Dean Wesley Smith calls this “overwhelming” your book. I call it burying it. But that’s hard to do if you want all your books to count. I say The Corner of 1700 Hamilton and my erotica novellas don’t count toward my backlist, but they have my name on them. They count. Even if I’ll never promote them. I put them out there, they are mine, and I own them.

For me, the glitz and glamour of being an independent author has gone away. You can scroll through writer twitter and maybe see some of those writers who haven’t published yet interacting with other writers with the same wide-eyed look. It’s not that I’ve become jaded–I still get teary-eyed whenever I finish a book and press publish–but it’s not long after that I’m on to the next thing, because there will always be another story.

What is this blog post about? It was supposed to be about how I revamped The Corner of 1700 Hamilton, but I’ll save it for another day.

I guess being quarantined has made me a bit nostalgic. I’ve come a long way in four and a half years. I’ve cried over lost files and bad reviews, I’ve virtually high-fived other authors and shared in their successes. I’ve shaken my head at others who keep making the same mistakes, and I feel bad for them because I don’t see their careers going anywhere. I know authors who are still working on the same story as the one when we met. This isn’t the career for those who can’t be tenacious, who can’t look ahead, who can’t see what they want in ten years and put in the work now. This industry isn’t for the faint of heart. Or for the weak.

I’ve come a long way in the almost five years I published 1700, and I plan to go even further in the next five. I WILL have a bestseller. Just wait and see.

What have you accomplished in the last five years? How has the industry changed since you’ve joined the writing community?

Let me know!

I read more than just Jewel’s book when I first joined Writer Twitter. Take a peek at the books I read that I very much enjoyed, and that I still recommend today. If you’re interested, click on the cover and it will bring you to Amazon. Some of them are in KU if you have a subscription. Some of the publishing dates reflect earlier dates, and I can only take that to mean that the authors have gone in, made changes, and republished. That’s one of the perks of being your own publisher. 🙂

I can’t link you to What Boys Are Made Of and the other books in the series because I think Stephanie is redoing them. It’s too bad she unpublished while relaunching them though, because they were really good. Probably some of the best indie work I’ve ever read. I hope she gets them put back up really soon. They deserve to be out in the world.

51xSbxNCXCL._SX322_BO1,204,203,200_

 

Entropy is the first in a trilogy, and I’ve read them all. I’ve mentioned before Joshua helped me by beta-reading Don’t Run Away, and we formed a friendship after meeting on Twitter. He has quite a few books in his backlist now, and if you want to read his next book, Perplexity, he’s blogging the scenes for a little entertainment due to COVID-19. You can find his blog, Perplexitybook.com, here.

41-CcnUwF5L

I love Aila with all my heart, and she knows her stuff. She introduced me to Canva, knows her way around IngramSpark, and is all around a fantastic writer. Sex, Love, and Technicalities is the first in a duet, and I helped her edit the second (which is why I’m attached to it, not because I helped her write it). Aila and I have been friends for a really long time.

51SHmVSUYlL

One of the first indie books I read was David’s Lonely Deceptions. Originally published as a novella trilogy, Austin Macauley squished them together and published them as a whole. Not that I would recommend going with a vanity press, David was fortunate and they paid him, not the other way around. Just recently he wrote the sequel and sent it off to Austin so the books would be consistent (they gave him an advance for that book also). Right now he’s working on something new that will be published under a pen name because he says he’s tired of people thinking he’s a doctor. LOL

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Tom is another writer who kind of fell off the grid, though I think he’s active on Goodreads. I haven’t spoken to him in years, but I’ve read all of his books, and he was one of my first Writer Twitter friends. I think Jewel introduced us. His books are hilarious, but dark, and I recommend empathetic all the time. It’s laugh-out-loud good.

5127jCie4nL

 

 

Is writing a hobby, or are you just telling people it is?

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Happy March! I’m taking a break from my Written Word Media blog series on 2020 indie-publishing predictions to give you a blog post full of motivation that will hopefully bolster you through until Spring! I’m sure the New Year, New Me, New Goals enthusiasm has cooled off, but let’s find that spark to keep you going back to your laptop!

You teach people how to treat you-4

So, let’s discuss hobbies! Is your writing a hobby?  More than that? It’s probably not a career yet–not if you’re making twenty dollars a month in sales. But maybe you’re hoping your writing is somewhere in between a hobby and full-time profession. I fall into that crack . . . not making a whole lot, I still have a day job, but I put A LOT of time into my writing.

But when I take a little down time, I scroll Twitter, and the other day I came upon this tweet:

Untitled design

All the comments were along the lines of “what a jerk”, or “how insensitive”, or “why would he say something like that”?

My first instinct was to agree, because I know not everyone’s significant other is supportive. But then I thought, wait. And I responded, “That depends. Do you take your writing seriously? Are you writing? Publishing? Querying? He can only see what you let him see.”

He didn’t respond, but he’s not the first person who’s complained people in their lives don’t take their writing seriously. And sometimes I wonder why that is. Oprah says, “You teach people how to treat you.” I believe this 100%. If you don’t take writing seriously for yourself, you have no reason to be offended when others don’t, either.

You teach people how to treat you

Do you defend your writing time? Do you respect your writing time once you have it? Meaning, do you actually use the time to write and not play on social media or secretly watch Netflix? Do you turn down friends if you haven’t gotten your words down for the day?

How can you get angry at someone calling your writing a hobby if that’s how you treat it? When someone doesn’t take you seriously because you find reasons you can’t write, or you keep breaking self-imposed deadlines, or that book you say is coming and never does, can you justify being angry when someone calls you out on it?

What can you do to change people’s perceptions?

  1. Change your own perceptions. Treat yourself how you want others to treat you. If you want to be treated as a writer, you have to write.
  2. Be realistic. Sometimes we don’t have a lot of time. Maybe 1000 words is all you can do in a day. That’s fine. You don’t have to put out 12 books a year to be a writer, or six, or three, or even one. You can only do what you have time to do. But if you’re wasting the time you do have, that’s no one’s fault but your own.
  3. Stop breaking deadlines. Or don’t make them in the first place. You announce goal after goal on social media hoping for accountability. And then you break deadline after deadline, promise after promise. What does that do for you? What message does that send to people on social media? You have to be accountable to yourself before others will hold you accountable. Keep deadlines and promises for yourself. Stop letting yourself down and you’ll build up your self-esteem and confidence.
  4. Protect your writing time and respect the time you’ve been given. If you’re not going to write during the time you fight for, why fight for it? Train your friends and family to understand writing is important to you. Then act like it is. And show them results.
  5. Realize you don’t have to be a writer. It’s okay to want to do other things. If you’d rather go out with friends, or be a gamer, or read instead of write. It’s okay to write two hours a week or write 1000 words a month. That’s your choice, it’s your life. But you can’t be upset when someone calls your writing a hobby because that’s what it is.

You show people what and who you are by your actions. Writers write. They produce books to query and publish, and going back to the guy on Twitter, I have no idea if he’s querying, or publishes, or writes short stories for magazines, or nonfiction for Medium or anything in between. I have no idea if his partner is right or wrong. He never replied. In fact, I don’t think I even follow him.

The point is, everyone pointed a finger at his partner, and I wanted to bring attention to the idea that it’s not always the other person. Sometimes it’s you. And if it is, there’s nothing you can say to defend yourself because you taught them to see you that way, and only you can fix it.

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This is one of the rare times I didn’t bring up money and writing (okay, maybe I did a little bit). Maybe that’s what his partner’s problem is–he’s not making money at writing, or like in my case and some of my friends’ situations, writing and publishing actually costs money. There’s not a lot you can say to someone who expects you to have overnight success (or any kind of success right out of the gate. Sometimes it takes years to find a foothold in this industry). All you can do is point out that without the work, there’s no success and hope that they accept it.

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What are your plans for the rest of 2020? Land an agent? Publish a book? Do you have a big launch planned for this summer?

Get busy, and let me know how you do!

Thanks for reading!

If you want to read more articles on writing as a hobby, look here:

Writing: Is It a Hobby or a Job? by Brian A. Klems

Five Reasons Why Your Writing Matters (Even if No-One Will Take You Seriously) By Ali Hale

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Happy New Year! A quick update on my goals for 2020.

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Happy New Year!

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Social media has been inundated with lists, lists, and more lists. I won’t bother with the best books I’ve read of the decade, or what all I’ve accomplished or not accomplished. I’m not going to bother ruminating about how 2019 was a dumpster fire in every way (actually, it wasn’t for me) or the million ways I’m going to make 2020 “my year.”

It’s silly to use January 1st to reinvent yourself. You are who you are, and a new date on the calendar won’t help. But that’s not to say I don’t have a few goals I’d like to tackle this year.

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In past blog posts I’ve written about the slow sale of my books. It’s difficult to keep up your spirits when you work so hard for so little in return. But this year I’m going to take responsibility for some of that. Instead of being a trout fighting my way upstream, I need to stop resisting and go with the flow.

Part of that is realizing I’m not doing 100% of what I need to do to sell my books, and I have to admit that part of the reason is I’m scared. I don’t have faith in my Tower City trilogy. It’s the first three books I count in my contemporary backlist and somehow I’ve gotten it into my head that they are not good. Book one was chopped and diced to the point I probably should have written it over from the start. But the reviews indicate they’re pretty good, and I should get over the idea that they’re not. Sure, I may have gotten strong as a writer since I published them, but I have to stop thinking they’re bad books.

I have a few reviews of Don’t Run Away on Amazon, and I remember this is the first review from someone I didn’t know. It was a proud moment–there’s even a ToC in it now thanks to formatting with Vellum:

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I need to have faith in my ability and not be scared when people read my work.

I also need to start a newsletter. I’m not very active online. My unanswered notifications on Twitter are months old. I don’t update my Facebook author page, and all I post on Instagram are pictures of my cats. (As cute as they may be, they don’t sell my books, dammit!) I need a hub for my readers. Either a newsletter or an active reader group on Facebook where I’ll actually post something, probably both. I know I’m doing myself a disservice not having a newsletter. This means focusing my attention on readers and not spending time on Twitter or using Canva to make pretty Instagram posts the same 10 people will like over and over again.

This year I also want to do more networking in the romance/indie-publishing space. I’ve been writing and publishing for three and a half years. I’ve made a lot friends in that time, lost some too, and some of the writers I know have been in the same place they were three years ago. I’m constantly learning about the industry, always listening for the new thing, I like listening to podcasts and keeping up with industry news. I need to start chatting with like-minded people who understand the value in that. Who treat their writing like a business and put in their 20-40 hours of writing time a week. Writing is really lonely. You’re by yourself with a laptop for hours and hours at a time and I need to find peers who know what that’s like and still do it anyway.

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I like the phrase, “Never be the smartest person the room.” I also feel like lately I’m the only writer in the room, and it will be nice for that to change.

These aren’t life shattering revelations, but they’re what I need to focus on moving forward if I want to start selling the books I spend so much time writing.

It’s not a secret that these next few months are a little hard on me. Winter in Minnesota is long and dreary. It’s hard to want to go anywhere because the temperatures are horrible and the roads are constantly clogged with snow. It takes a lot of energy just to get through a day with no sunshine, and I need to focus on releasing my wedding series and appreciating the little things while I wait for warmer temps and the sun to come back.

I do have a selling/marketing summit in May that I’ll be attending with David in Nashville, and I’m looking forward to that. No matter how long winter seems, spring always comes back around.

Just keep moving forward the best you can, and better times will come.

Tell me your goals for 2020. How do you plan to move forward? Let me know!

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